An Enemy of the People (Photo: Emilio Madrid)
Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People always feels timely, if blunt. It is a play about community pressure, capitalism, and politically inconvenient truths. It can hold a mirror up to society and reflect our times because individualism, self-interest, and mob mentality never go out of style. With strong performances, Amy Herzog’s adaptation and Sam Gold’s production make this a more vibrant offering than past ones but ultimately the play’s plot machinations have their limits.
Dr. Thomas Stockmann (Jeremy Strong) is a man of science. He is otherwise quite absent-minded, wholly impractical, and tends towards depression. A widower, he has moved back to his hometown with his daughter Petra (Victoria Pedretti) who manages everything in their life. He has been appointed medical director of the local baths which are set to be a booming business for his town. But he has secretly carried out some tests and discovered the water supply for the baths is polluted and teaming with bacteria.
Naturally, he wants to bring this to everyone’s attention and have it be fixed. But he has no appreciation for the costs, the political reality, or the threat that his discovery brings. His brother, Peter Stockmann (Michael Imperioli) is the Mayor and chairman of the baths. The Mayor immediately identifies these complications and seeks to keep this information suppressed.
The local radical newspaper editor Hovstad (Caleb Eberhardt) and local printer Aslaksen (Thomas Jay Ryan), a representative of the middle class, initially appreciate the doctor’s noble discovery and laude him a “local hero.” But the Mayor turns these supporters quickly against the doctor when he threatens that the townsfolk will have to pay to fix the mistakes of the baths’ design through taxes. It will take years to change the water supply so this economic engine for the town will be utterly destroyed. In an instant, Dr. Stockman goes from hero to pariah.
Amy Herzog’s adaptation of the play slims down Ibsen’s a bit, eliminating or collapsing characters, modernizing the language, and watering down Dr. Stockmann’s tendency towards hyper-manic episodes. By exorcising the character of the doctor’s wife (or having Petra stand in for her sometimes) she also eliminates some nagging resistance within his family.
Petra is more of a modern avatar for independent, progressive thinking and will support her father’s ideals while figuring out the practical implications she will solve on her own. Her presence makes a greater case for her father’s views and makes him look less isolated or extreme. It also works better as Petra, and the issues for women’s rights, gets centered a bit more. Pedretti, making her Broadway debut, lets us see this Petra who is both trapped in her society’s expectations and wanting to bust out of them. She’s her own person but stuck in a world where she knows her choices are limited.
Sam Gold’s production unobtrusively supports the text (the stage business is limited to lighting candles and lamps and characters singing Norwegian songs as the cast removes props and set pieces with changes of scenes) until the “intermission.” During this brief pause (in which they play Norwegian band A-ha’s “Take On Me”), they invite the audience on stage, set up a bar, and serve product placement aquavit.
One can pretend this is just the economics of Broadway but what was more troubling was the branding from this scene remains when the play starts up again. With the lights up on the audience, the second half starts with a meeting of the townsfolk and the branded bar remains on stage.
Then when the townsfolk attack the doctor, they use the branded buckets of ice left on stage to pour on top of Stockmann. While an effective replacement for rocks being thrown, I could not get over the weird commercialization of the moment and what it was trying to say. Even art is full of compromise?
Jeremy Strong playing anyone’s annoying/self-destructive brother carries with it some pre-existing television baggage, but, to his credit, his Dr. Stockmann is an entirely different kind of manchild. He is more of a gentle, idealist: a quiet-spoken man of simple pleasures and a bit helpless in the world. After all the doctor has been through, Strong, with tears in his eyes, melts at the rise of the sun, overcome with emotion. His defeats are palpable and eventually he starts to see how is actions are costing him.
Stockmann is often accused of exaggerating, being egotistical or reckless. But Strong remains even keeled and underplays Stockmann’s quirks. In the last Broadway production, I noted the swings of mania and depression from the doctor, but here his moments of enthusiasm for his discovery and the truth are still quite grounded. So, his generalized calm in the face of constant onslaught, and nitpicking of his behavior by the community, makes the gaslighting by his brother and the town all the more evident. It enhances the tragedy.
Whatever the background tension between the brothers is is left unspoken in the play but there is always this personal animosity bubbling beneath the surface as their disputes rise to the financial and political. Strong and Imperioli (also in his Broadway debut) are well-matched. Their flashes of youthful brotherly antagonism are quite fun, giving the play some solid laughs.
As much as Strong and Pedretti show the toll that this idealism takes, far too often the play’s metaphorical functions can overwhelm the human. The production and performances are filled with graceful nuance but the play itself cannot help but just be a little too on the nose.